Matrox Interface Is Editor’s Best Friend

GLENDALE, ARIZ.—Picture This Productions is a small, full-service production company, and as owner, I wear many hats. I’m a producer/director, director of photography/cinematographer and also an editor/motion graphic artist. In such an operation, selection of equipment is of paramount importance to success. We need to be fiscally responsible, efficient and creative all at the same time.

One of our equipment choices was the Matrox MXO2 Rack MAX editing interface. It has every input anyone could want including HD-SDI, HDMI, composite, component, Y/C, XLR, surround sound, AES/EBU, along with RS-422 for control. The beauty of this unit is that it’s compatible with both PCs and Macs and has a variety of connection options (PCIe, ExpressCard/ 34 and Thunderbolt), so it can literally be used anytime, anywhere and on any system.

ENHANCES PRODUCTIVITY We travel a lot and like to stay productive on the road. I can start a project in the edit suite using the PCIe connection on my tower and take it with me using the ExpressCard/34 or Thunderbolt connection on my laptop. The Matrox HDMI connection and calibration utility even let me use a hotel room television as my edit monitor.

What’s more, the MXO2 Rack MAX has a secret weapon found only in Matrox products. The MAX technology speeds the encoding of H.264 files tremendously—up to five times faster than using just the NLE alone. We don’t have to worry about sacrificing quality for speed either; the quality is superb.

Today, all of our clients want their finished product as quickly as possible and many prefer to review material online instead of sitting in during the post session. MAX lets us encode H.264 files fast and upload them to the Web for review and final delivery. It’s useful for speedy Bluray and mobile device content too.

A REAL ‘ANYTHING-TO-ANYTHING’ INTERFACE DEVICE Our NLE of choice is Adobe Premiere, along with other Adobe apps: After Effects, Photoshop, Media Encoder, Prelude, and Encore. Our camera of choice is the Red Epic and R3D media files. We also use Sony XDCAM, XDCAM EX, XAVC, Canon 5DMIII and occasionally P2 files. The MXO2 has no trouble with any of the leading file-based workflows. We simply drop material into a timeline, hit play and everything works. Having a single device that interfaces with all of our favorite tools is a huge timesaver, and very cost effective.

Recently, an electronics company asked us for a short-turnaround shooting and posting of a commercial and several tradeshow/ Internet pieces for their new guitar pickups. Seamless integration with Premiere made this possible, as a variety of codecs were employed including R3D, MXF and MP4 files. The Matrox color correction made the grading shots to match easy too. We quickly encoded each version to H.264 with MAX and uploaded it to the Web for client approval.

All our broadcast and corporate clients expect the pinnacle of quality, along with speed, accuracy and budget. Our Matrox equipment helps us maximize creativity, no matter what the budget is and to produce results that are beyond expectations.